Prosecutors: Tacoma woman left kittens for dead

A Tacoma woman has been charged with two counts of first-degree animal cruelty after prosecutors say she let her kittens starve to death during a tough break-up with her boyfriend.

Rachel Dudley, 25, told police she left her two kittens alone in a vacant apartment for a month because she was “going through a bad break up” and forgot about them, according to a statement from the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office. She had moved out of the apartment in early March to live with her mother.

When the manager of the apartment complex performed an occupancy check on March 28, she discovered the kittens. Both were still alive at the time, and the defendant promised to come take care of them, prosecutors say.

The manager performed a follow-up check on April 6 and found one of the kittens deceased; the other was severely emaciated.

“The dead kitten had suffered from a severe respiratory infection, but the cause of death was chronic starvation,” prosecutors say. “The kitten likely suffered considerably before death. The live kitten was severely dehydrated and had to be euthanized … ”

When contacted by police and asked how she thought the kittens died, Dudley allegedly said, “They probably starved to death.”

Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist said while her actions were not “sadistically cruel,” they were “stupidly cruel.”